ABSTRACT
This chapter explores certain aspects of the meaning of the term cristiano for the indigenous peoples of the Bajo Huallaga, and the problems raised for anthropological approaches to Christianity. Historically, anthropology arose in a social milieu dominated by the colonial expansion of predominantly Christian societies, and in that colonial process conversion to Christianity often played a key ideological function. It is easy to assume that the people of the Bajo Huallaga use the word cristiano because their ancestors were extensively missionized by the Jesuits. Twentieth-century ethnographic accounts of indigenous peoples of the Bajo Huallaga, such as the Shiwilu/Jebero, Cocama, Cocamilla, Lamista Quechua, Chamicuro and Chayahuita, show clearly that conversion to Christianity is used by these people as a key metaphor of spatio-temporal processes. Ethnographies of Bajo Huallaga peoples in the late twentieth centuries are temporally posterior to Jesuit action and writings, but they are not logically posterior.
